DNA325 Diary on WebSummit: Day 3

There are a bunch of different themes and speakers in today’s DNA325 diary note. On the third day of WebSummit 2017 were discussed such hot trends like women in tech, the impact of games on the society and their role in various entertainment sub-industries, and of course where blockchain goes next and what industries can use this technology for future enhancement.

First Blake Irving, CEO, GoDaddy with Susan Herman, President of American Civil Liberties Union and Jane Martinson, Columnist in The Guardian discussed a gender diversity problem in tech companies and harassment problem constantly raising lately. All participants in the discussion agreed that the situation has changed for the better, but there is much more remains to be done.

Diversity in technology: if you see smth, say smth. It is not a women’s problem, this is a guy’s problem.

The next speech, about gaming, was lead by Kati Levoranta, CEO of Rovio Entertainment Corp. and Rick Kelley, VP of Gaming in Facebook. The main message of this speech was that the border between games, films and other kinds of entertainment is blurred. And now games, especially mobile games become the more widespread type of entertainment than TV, online video and others.

Kati Levoranta told a lot of interesting stuff about Rovio, it’s business and their plans! She told that now for Rovio it’s all about investing in brand name and maintaining it is very hard. And one of the ways to do that is movie production. That is why they partnered with Sony in 2012 and that is why they gonna release one more movie in 2019, but this time already independently.

But on the top of this brand name investments with movie making, they decided to monetize their brand name and old game titles through the huge system of licensing and new game titles publishing. That is why they unified their team and both business units:

Games development and publishing

Licensing: selling a brand

After that, the main star of WebSummit this year was discussed – blockchain. Dr. Chitra Dorai from IBM, Noelle Acheson, Producer at CoinDesk and Jon Matonis, VP of Corporate Strategy at nChain put forward their theories which fintech and non-fintech industries blockchain will disrupt next.

According to the trends speaker raised during the discussion, blockchain may revolutionize transaction services like Swift, due to its fast speed, security and lack of certification. So a company, anytime (even on Sunday) can send payment to any other company, and so operational and financial process cost can be reduced up to 60-70%.

Blockchain security never sleeps!

Also, blockchain can take its place in such industries as supply chain management, healthcare and identity – and any other industry where transparency and authenticity of data are critical. However, nothing was told about blockchain usage in government and election processes, which is even more sensitive to forged and non-transparent data.